Plot summary

In 2009 director Alex Gibney set out to film The Road Back, a documentary on cyclist Lance Armstrong's comeback year after a four-year retirement from the sport. Three years later, on October 2012, a doping investigation led to his lifetime ban from competition and the stripping of his seven Tour De France titles, and the documentary was shelved. On January 14, 2013, three hours after his appearance on Oprah, Armstrong went back to Gibney to set the record straight about his career. Amrstrong was diagnosed with cancer which forced him to retire from professional cycling. Prior to that he had won the Tour De France 7 times & had been subject to doping allegations throughout his career. By 2012 the doping charges appeared with regularity in mainstream media & the charges were impossible for Lance to refute. Several of his teammates testified against him & said they saw him taking drugs. The UCI bands him from cycling in Oct 2012 & strips him of his titles. This leads to the Oprah interview in Jan 2013. Lance admits to doping & taking performance enhancing drugs in each of his 7 titles & admits to using his celebrity status to cover it all up. He also says that he regrets coming back to the sport in 2009, which eventually led to his incarceration.The cycling governing body UCI had always maintained that Lance had cheated. In fact a French article titles "The Armstrong Lie" talked about his urine samples from his first Tour De France win in 1999 containing EPO (a banned performance enhancer). The UCI was willing to admit Lance into the Tour De France in 2009. Armstrong had escaped a huge doping crackdown in 2006 due to his retirement in 2005. The crackdown implicated 58 cyclists, including each of the cyclists who shared the podium with Armstrong from 1999 to 2005.Lance was diagnosed with testicular cancer before 1999, which had spread considerably by then. He underwent a experimental procedure in UCLA which removed his testicle, involved brain surgery & brutal chemotherapy. Lance survived despite bad odds. Lance was a rich US cyclist by then (been born to a poor receptionist mother & having never met his father). He was a dominant competitor in US day endurance races. After he survived the cancer he decided to win the Tour De France to show everyone that he could still dominate.His win in 1999 turned heads since Armstrong was not known as a strong cyclist on mountains & yet here he was, a cancer survivor, going at greater speed & power than any of the cyclists before him. A cortisone drug showed up in Armstrong's urine sample in 1999 & he was asked to provide a reason by UCI. Lance's team scours the internet & finds a commercial brand that uses that cortisone as a rash cream & confirms that as the reason of its use.Michele Ferrari was Lance's team doctor & was notorious for using drugs to enhance the performance of athletes. Ferrari knew Lance from 1995 & after he survived cancer, Ferrari knew Lance had lost a lot of muscle. So he got Lance to shift to lower gears in the hills & pedal faster, which shifted the load from the muscles to the heart. He then introduced drugs to boost oxygen levels in the blood, so that the heart & lungs could sustain themselves longer. Ferrari also had insiders in UCI's drug testing labs, which helped him control the drug levels to below detection. Ferrari was convicted of sports fraud in 2004, which led to Lance publicly disowning him.Lance says in 2013 that EPO doping was prevalent in Europe in the 80's & 90's & he had adopt it in 1995 to stay competitive. EPO was not detectable in urine tests in the 1990's which made it easier for everyone to use it. when EPO testing finally caught up, Ferrari went to an older trick of blood transfusions (taking blood out before the race, & pumping it back in just prior to the race to boost red blood cell count with effects same as EPO & impossible to detect).IN 2008 Lance decides to make a clean comeback & to win the Tour De France to prove his critics that his 7 titles were legit. One of his former team mates, who was convicted of doping in 2006, wants to join Lance's team but is refused as they want to portray an image of a "clean team". This former team mates knew all the details of Lance's drug use & eventually led to Lance's downfall. Lance participates in the Italian race in 2009, 2 months prior to the Tour De France & cracks on the hills. He is tested continuously for drugs during the days leading up to the Tour & tests negative. Lance trains in the Colorado mountains for the race, but critics allege that he was storing blood for transfusion.As the Tour De France gets underway, Lance is at 10th position after stage 1, 22 seconds behind team mate Alberto Contador, who was not on talking terms with Lance. But by stage 2, he moved up to 2nd place. The movie digresses to a former Lance team mate Frankie who is a TV reporter & the only US one that Lance would talk to in 2009. IN 2006, Frankie & his wife had testified against Lance saying that he admitted to taking EPO. Lance denies & Frankie & his wife are immediately outcast from the cycling community of Lance's supporters. This makes Frankie's wife Betsy, obsessed with exposing the truth on Lance. She goes public on Lance's doping allegations & slowly gets support from Lance's former team mates who support her story. Lance's legal team responded with a series of lawsuits against all critics which the defendants could not afford financially. Critics also allege that UCI's president Verburgen was Lance's friend & warned Lance whenever his doping levels came close to the questionable limits. Lance admits that everyone was making money & hence it was in everyone's interest to protect Lance who was the best thing to happen to cycling in a long time. By stage 15 in 2009, Lance was 42 seconds behind Contrador who had the yellow jersey. Despite his best attempts Lance finishes 3rd, while Contrador wins. Lance feels that the fact that he raced clean in 2009 vindicates his previous victories. But a 2013 report by UCI raises doubts on Lance using blood transfusions in 2009.But what the 2009 podium did was bring all the critics out who participated & testified against Lance in a federal investigation. They are were motivated to set the record straight that a clean 2009 race didn't mean that the earlier races were dope free. The lie became impossible to defend & led to the Oprah interview in 2013. Lance was sued by the US Postal service (his sponsor in 1999 & 2000) for $ 100 M & banned for all sport for lifetime, governed by the World Anti doping agency.